13 september 2011

Copyright Term Extension: Defeat

The EU yesterday handed over an extension of the copyright monopoly from 50 to 70 years to the record companies

As expected and feared, the EU Council of Ministers yesterday took the decision to extend copyright for sound recordings retroactively from 50 to 70 years.

This is yet another example of how the Council and Commission of the EU are completely in the hands of the copyright lobby and will do whatever the lobbyists ask them to, no matter how absurd or harmful to society it may be.

The Belgian, Czech, Dutch, Luxembourg, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian and Swedish delegations were the only ones to vote against the extension. Austria and Estonia abstained.

If I discover a cure for cancer, I can get patent on my invention and be protected for 20 years. It takes a small fortune in fees to get the patent — especially if I want to cover the world — and gazillions of applications have to be written and sent.

If I take a microphone and sing a song, that recording is automatically, without any effort or cost, protected for 70 years, globally, now.

This is just a temporary defeat. I do expect this to be back on the agenda, but then to reduce the term to perhaps 20 or 30 years. A few things need to happen: a large portion of the ”Typewriter generation”, still a mighty voting block, needs to pass away to be replaced by new ”Internet-generation” voters (I’m from the 8-bit home computer generation, about 10-15 years before the Internet took off). Another thing is the name of the party; quite a few people I talk to tell me they will never vote for a party called the Pirate Party as they are unable to take it seriously. I’d rather see something along the lines of Digital Freedom Party or Digital Revolution Party. A final and perhaps the most important thing is that a Public Domain for previously-commercially-released sound recordings needs to be created. This does not exist. A very small portion of society, those that actually liked reading the books that were on the mandatory list in high school, know about Project Gutenberg and actually use it to obtain archaic books. This needs to be created for sound recordings, and needs to be created fast, and needs plenty of publicity. There are a lot of people out there that already use top-of-the-line turntables that create great quality digital transfers from old jazz 78rpm mono records. I can’t stress enough how important it is to actually CREATE the music-public-domain FIRST before you can fight for it. Creative-commons stuff does not count. They HAVE to be commercially released recordings for which the copyright expired, nothing else, and they HAVE to be the best quality possible for these old recordings.

You see, Christian? Perhaps you should start doing like others: Start going on weekends on Thursday, spend your work time reading books or being absent…. and just pocket the salary for doing no work. After all the parliament is meant to be just for that – to make Europe look at least a bit democratic while in reality all decisions are made by some unelected, often corrupted officials who don’t care what they are deciding about.

No change in practice since the music is illegally shared through The Pirate Bay and similar services within a few days after appearing on the legal market. Would a ”victory” in this battle meant that The Swedish Pirate Party would stop it’s collaboration with the Pirate Bay?

@Felten: I’m not one to say that the current system is good, actually I’m one to say that it is really bad, but wouldn’t it be worse for humanity if it where the other way around so that the song was protected for 20 years with a lot of trouble while the Cancer-cure was protected for 70 years by default? 😉

For your information: Be advised that you recently erased any shred of credibility you might previously have had. A radical change in your choice and use of arguments will be required for you to change this fact. Repeating your mistakes all over again will not help.

I am wondering what is going to happen in 20 years. Paul McCartney will be 89 by then. I suppose he will be very much in need of further support so that he could still afford a tiny glass of champagne at his 114th birthday. Those poor aging musicians 😦

You mean a huge change in practice? Since there is a large amount of money involved in this, that instead of benefiting society and the free market, now will benefit monopoly holders and the record companies. But i guess facts, or understanding copyright, society and the free market never was your thing..

> ”since the music is illegally shared through The Pirate Bay..”

There is no music illegally shared through Piratebay. But i guess facts, or understanding of the judicial system or technical details was never your strong side. Slander however seems to be your thing.

> ”..within a few days after appearing on the legal market.”

A few days? Are you saying that the filesharing community has slacked of? I thought it was a matter of minutes, or hours tops, but if what you are saying is true something most be done.

> ”Would a ”victory” in this battle meant that The Swedish Pirate Party would stop it’s collaboration with the Pirate Bay?”

What would be the point in that? The fully legal collaboration with the fully legal search engine part of the fully legal and very popular site Piratebay is something very very good, and very very legal. Why stop something good and legal? Again you make no sense, but i guess making sense was never your thing.

By the way, everyone is still waiting for your reply of a bunch of remarks in the previous post, where you, in a most fascist and inhuman way, compared a fully legal collaboration with a fully legal and popular site, as being worse then human trafficking, organized crime, extortion, murder, blackmail, torture, kidnapping, armed robbery and drug trading, to mention a few. Unlike previously when you only compared non-profit copyright infringement to rape. In hindsight i guess that was your nice side?

Care to elaborate on your comparison? An let’s not forget that Mårten is still waiting on an answer on why copying is immoral.

Here’s the post if you’ve lost track of it. I’ll think it’s a good thing to post this link everywhere you post, to remind you, and everyone else, of what you wrote in it.

Christian, did you spot this in the article about where the money goes, you’ve linked here?

”The Council of Ministers, which followed the European Parliament in approving the changes to the laws,…”

Perhaps you should explain to them how it was with the Council following the Parliament. Like this it looks like if it is the Parliament who actually wanted the thing pushed through and the poor Council was dragged there against all its might.

To say that the Parliament ”dragged the poor Council” against its will would be inaccurate for a number of reasons, but you and the article are right that the Parliament unfortunately took this stupid decision before the Council did.

This was the previous Parliament, before the 2009 elections and before I became a member, which is why I tried to get a renewed referral to give this Parliament a chance to revise its position. But alas that attempt failed.